William Blake expressed his radical vision through illuminated books that combine poetry and art. We’ll study selections from some of his powerful early poems: Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Auguries of Innocence and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. While Blake’s poetry stands on its own and requires no background knowledge, encountering him is especially interesting after reading Dante or Milton. So, this study would be a fine next chapter for those who have previously studied Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy with the LitSalon. You can view some of Blake’s art and poetry here.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five meeting study led by Sean Forester
• Mondays, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (UK time), 22, 29 June and 6,13, 20 July
• Please purchase facsimile editions of Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell with Blake’s illuminated manuscripts in full colour. The texts are also available free online at the Blake Archive.
• £200 for five two-hour meetings

This is the twelfth in a series of single session studies on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Participants are welcome to join as few or many sessions as they please.

For centuries, critics have debated the identity of Shakespeare’s poetic rival, depicted in the sonnets as a celebrated writer competing for the equally mysterious Fair Youth’s patronage and affection. Leading candidates include Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman and Edmund Spenser, though he may represent a composite of rivals. He vanishes from the sonnets as abruptly as he appears. In this twelfth standalone session, we’ll examine two of the nine “rival poet” sonnets alongside an earlier sonnet addressed directly to the beloved.  

The sonnets have always inspired, fascinated and disturbed readers. Are these lyric expressions of tortured love – among other themes – the key to understanding the mysterious life of Shakespeare, or are they not autobiographical at all?

Through close analysis and hands-on interpretive work, we will examine Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic exploration of his speaker’s romantic and tortured feelings and experiences.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single two-hour meeting led by Dr Julie Sutherland on Zoom
• Wednesday 24 June 2026, 5.00 – 7.00 pm (BST)
• Session #12 – Sonnets 79, 86 and 87
• £30.00 for two-hour study

We are offering these self-contained, individual studies of Shakespeare’s sonnets in a workshop style setting. Over time we will cover a broad selection of the 154 sonnets that comprise Shakespeare’s celebrated sequence. Participants are invited to join as few or many sessions as they please.

Before the session, Julie Sutherland will send links to online versions or attach specific copies for discussion. It is highly recommended that you print these off before joining this hands-on session. If you have a printed edition, please also have it ready so we can consider variations between texts. Have a notebook and pencil on hand as well!

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

The first major poem in English literature, Beowulf was composed between the eighth and eleventh centuries in a language which few English speakers understand today. Set in the warrior societies of dark age Denmark and Sweden, it tells of the hero Beowulf and his three victorious fights with the monstrous creature Grendel, with Grendel’s ferocious, vengeful mother, and with a venomous, fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding dragon. It is also, in the words of celebrated author and editor Maria Dahvana Headley, a recent translator of the poem, “a dazzling, furious, funny, vicious, desperate, hungry, beautiful, mutinous, maudlin, supernatural, rapturous shout”.

We will be reading Beowulf in Headley’s acclaimed, radical, ‘feminist’ version – “brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating” as The New Yorker describes it. It’s “a Beowulf for our moment”, focusing on themes of toxic masculinity, power dynamics and warrior-bonding while, in the words of Professor Carolyne Larrington, allowing “space for the poem’s women to stretch and breathe”. 

Headley declares that the lines in her translation are “structured for speaking, and for speaking in contemporary rhythms” and she maintains the alliterative and rhythmic drive of the original. This is a translation which demands to be read aloud and to be heard attentively, and this study will provide an opportunity so to honour both poem and translation.

Every translation is a new interpretation of the original, Headley’s more brashly and explicitly than most. As we read, we will also keep one eye on more traditional translations (and from time to time scrutinise the original Old English) to try to discern other themes and ideas haunting the world of Beowulf.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four-meeting study led by Tim Swinglehurst live on Zoom
• Thursday 2, 9, 16 & 23 July 2026, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time)
• We will read the translation by Maria Dahvana Headley, published by Scribe UK, ISBN: ‎ 978-1911617822
• £140.00 for four meetings.

Step into the vast cosmos of John Milton’s Paradise Lost in this immersive eight-week study. More than a poem, Milton’s epic is a world unto itself, one with vaulted heavens, smouldering hells and a fragile Eden. It presents a realm where every choice tips the balance of creation. This study invites curious minds to lose themselves in the epic’s grandeur and wrestle with the questions it refuses to let go: what does it mean to rebel? To obey? To be free? To fall?

Over eight two-and-a-half-hour sessions, we will traverse all twelve books of Paradise Lost, tracing Milton’s visions of angels in revolt, serpentine deceits, and humankind on the brink of catastrophe. Each week, close reading of key passages will spark lively conversation about the poem’s grand themes: freedom and fate, temptation and grace, the allure of evil, and the possibility of redemption. Along the way, we shall uncover the thunderous music and daring invention that defines Milton’s verse.

This study is as much about experience as analysis. Reading this great work aloud will enable us to feel the powerful rhythm, sharpen our thinking in the heat of dialogue, and discover together how a 17th-century poet still speaks to us with urgent clarity. Participants will not just read Paradise Lost. They will inhabit it, wrestle with it, and carry its fire forward.

Whether you come for epic storytelling, moral philosophy, or the sheer intoxication of language, this study promises a journey that is as challenging as it is exhilarating. Experience or rediscover Milton’s masterpiece and join us as we explore what it means to “awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight-week study, live on Zoom, led by Dr Julie Sutherland
• Eight two-and-a-half-hour meetings, Tuesdays, 5.00-7.30 pm (UK time)
• 14 July – 1 September 2026
• £320 for eight meetings and background notes and resources
• We will use the Penguin Classics edition: Paradise Lost by John Milton, edited by John Leonard (ISBN-10: ‎ 9780140424393)

Dante’s epic journey through the afterlife continues in the Purgatorio. Here the poet explores self-transformation: How do we let go of pride, hatred, lust, jealousy and greed? How can we move from cruelty and to kindness, from sin to salvation? 

Dante writes in the first person as a very human voyager, reacting with strong and varied emotions to the characters before him, just as the reader might. As we pass through an array of landscapes, each appropriate to the sins and purgations there, Dante undergoes a kind of transformation himself. And he challenges us to do the same. 

You don’t need to have read Dante’s Inferno to join this study. Dante, like Joyce, is an ideal author for in-depth study at the LitSalon. The Divine Comedy has multiple meanings that provide rich material for discussion, weaving together myth, theology, history and the contemporary life of Dante’s time. We will explore Dante’s relationship with Virgil and Beatrice, and with several other vivid personalities he meets along his way.  

According to T.S. Eliot, “The whole study and practice of Dante seems to me to teach that the poet should be the servant of his language, rather than the master of it.” Join us in reading one of the classics of world literature. You will be welcome to use whichever translation of Dante you prefer, but Sean will be using the translation by D.M. Black, whose notes and commentary are especially focused on the Purgatorio’s implications for psychological self-transformation.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eleven meeting study (on Zoom) led by Sean Forester
• Thursdays, 5.30-7.30 pm (UK time)
• 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 October; 5, 12, 19 November; 3, 10, 17 December 2026 (N.B. no meeting on 26 November, Thanksgiving)
• £440 for eleven two-hour meetings, to include opening notes and resources
• Recommended edition: Dante’s Purgatorio, translated by Jean Hollander & Robert Hollander, ISBN: 978-0385497008